All Right! Potluck!

I was working with someone this week via NetMeeting (an application that allows one to see and even control a PC in another geographical location) to test something in Unix. This person, who was extremely easygoing, had the habit of checking his email frequently, and while we were running commands in Unix, suddenly switched to Outlook and saw the announcement for his department’s Thanksgiving celebration.

“All right! Potluck!” he said, in the same tone I reserve for, “Wow, a dinner invitation from Christopher Walken!”

While we’re thinking of things to be happy about, all right!: Democrats take the House and the Senate, Nancy Pelosi is the first woman Speaker of the House, and Rumsfeld has stepped off, I mean, stepped down.

Not having cable, I get only two clear TV stations, one of which showed 90 minutes of Dancing with the Stars right in the middle of the election coverage, so I had to call my parents, who have cable, and contrive to keep them from hanging up on me for six hours. I also turned on my PC and tuned to cnn.com, whose coverage was excellent.

Bush hardly seems upset about Rumsfeld, lending credence to my theory that he has secretly wanted to say goodbye to him for some time but was prevented by loyalty, blackmail, or a combination of both.

I just finished the biography The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the 70s in San Francisco, which I enjoyed. I have a couple of his albums and am quite fond of them. When he was ill and soon to die, of AIDS, he could hear a crowd not far from his house yelling “Sylvester! Sylvester!” That's quite touching.

The book is full of colorful expressions like, “You’re on my last gay nerve.” I’ll have to try that on my coworkers. A couple of times a year, I like to say, at 4:59, “Well, it’s been great to be here—thanks for having me. In fact, I had such a good time, I might drop by again tomorrow.”

Or, “Watching you work has exhausted me. I’ll have to run along.”

I know a fellow who says, “Work fascinates me. I could watch it for hours.”

Hammett is doing great. He’s very cheery and full of energy. He is using his scratching post rather than scratching the upholstered chair, which makes me very happy, and when he’s not napping, he likes to chase balls around the apartment, look out the window, and catch and eat bugs. If I put my face near his, he licks my cheek solicitously. At night, now and then he likes to climb under the covers and nestle close to me. He also likes to climb between the slats of the Levolor blinds to get to the windowsill for 4 a.m. bird-watching, which makes an awful noise.

The scratching post came with a cheap little shiny green toy that I almost threw out, but then I decided to toss it to Hammett and see if he happened to like it, and it turns out it’s his favorite thing. He walks all over carrying it in his mouth. I’ve found it in his food dish a couple of times lately. He likes to toss his head to send it flying, and tear after it.

He also likes to carry a little toy mouse around by its tail now and then, which is slightly disturbing. The mouse was given to him by the SPCA, otherwise he wouldn’t have it, as I think it has some kind of real fur on it.

I recently received a card from my friend in L.A. in which she apologized for not responding sooner to an emailed communication of mine. I assured her yesterday via email that I hadn't taken offense because, frankly, my memory's too shot to remember who did what or didn’t. That is, I'm more than happy to take offense, but it has to be right in the moment when wrongdoing occurs; otherwise, the miscreant will have to do without.

Even as I feel happy about Hammett, I feel exceedingly unhappy about Thelonious. What bothers me most, lately, is that I never dream about her. When she was alive, I dreamed about her quite often—for instance, that we were in a canoe and I was paddling along with one arm and holding her with the other, keeping her safe.

After she died, I looked forward to dreaming about her, because if the dream was exceedingly vivid, as many are, it would be a chance to see her again for a few moments. Tom said maybe the reason I’m not dreaming about her is something good. Maybe I don’t dream about seeing her safely through the water because I already saw her safely out of this life.

Last night I dreamed about Hammett for the first time: That he had climbed down the fire escape ladder into the backyard and was nowhere to be seen.